The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards has recently announced its finalists and shortlists of its contestants. The photos we've already seen are stunning, but there are literally dozens of amazing images worth taking a longer look at.

Like, holy crap. Can you believe that that picture above is actually a photograph of wildebeests in …
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The annual competition is hosted by the World Photography Organisation, and photographers from 166 countries submitted nearly 140,000 images, the highest number of entries in the awards' seven year history.

The winners of the Open and Youth categories will be announced on 18 March. Professional category winners and the coveted L'Iris D'Or/ Sony World Photography Awards
Photographer of the Year title will be announced at a gala ceremony in London on 30 April.

Below we show you all the professional finalists in Architecture, Conceptual, Landscape and Nature & Wildlife categories, from whom the judges are going to choose the winners. What are the prizes? The L'Iris D'Or winner will receive $25,000 and the Open Photographer of the Year will
receive $5,000. All winners, including category winners, will receive the latest digital
imaging equipment from Sony.

All titles and descriptions below are from the photographers themselves.

Professional Competition Finalists

Ludovic Maillard: Porte de la Chapelle. Exchanger Gate of the Paris's Boulevard Périphérique at the Porte de la Chapelle. From the series "Typology of concrete" – the concrete surface and often hidden spaces from the Paris ring road, 40 years after its construction.

Ludovic Maillard: Porte de Bagnolet 2. Porte de Bagnolet 2, Paris's Boulevard Périphérique. From the series "Typology of concrete" – the concrete surface and often hidden spaces from the Paris ring road, 40 years after its construction.

Herman Van Den Boom: Neigbours. "Neigbours" is a series of typical Belgian double houses. Every single building is an expression of individuality. These various and often contradictory partnerships are remarkable. When people with so often opposite taste and style manage to live.

Sungseok Ahn: The object on the green. Jeonghye temple, a 13 storied pagoda, from the series "Historic Present". Sungseok Ahn's Historic Present questions the memory of past from the fast changing scenery of today. By overlapping a historical location with an old image of that exact place, he questions the way we treat our history.

Sungseok Ahn: Two phase. Sungnyemun in Seoul, from the series "Historic Present". Sungseok Ahn's Historic Present questions the memory of past from the fast changing scenery of today. By overlapping a historical location with an old image of that exact place, he questions the way we treat our history.

Thomas Brummett: Light Projection 3. From the series "Light Projections" – the silver gelatin prints are camera-less and film-less images - but they are not Photogram's (nothing was placed on the surface of the paper). So I call them Light Projections. I am still trying to figure out if these have ever been made in the history of photography - in quite this way - as the circles are purely optical in nature and are really those "Bokeh like" Circles of Confusion that a lens can produce.

Hao Li: Untitled. From the series "The Repetitive Mechanism" – this series of photos depicts the everyday life in the modern world - repetitive, routine, yet with slight differences. The invention of steam engine and locomotive greatly accelerated the Industrial Revolution. Mechanical transportation networks were developed to efficiently distribute freights and to commute. These technologies were the fundamental factors to the emergence of capitalism and globalization.

Frauke Thielking: Untitled. From the series "Art by accident" – I took the pictures on the floors of different artist studios. The images look like autonomous artworks, although the colour splashes and blots occured by accident.

Roei Greenberg: Trail. A trail at Ein zeitim (olive spring) national park, the name is an arab name taken from the arab village that was located near by, the only remains I could find are the bricks that been put together to form this trail in the woods. From the series "Israeli Landscape 2013" – this is a journey thru the israeli landscape, examining the relations between the natural world and the man made in a land that have been so dramatically changed over the course of history. Each image is a singular peak in this journey but together form a unique point of view, a quite, pictorial look over a land that is constantly in conflict.

Roei Greenberg: Demilitarized Zone. The Golan heights separates between Israel and Syria, this peaceful landscape has become like a monument for war and conflict with demolished houses, military bases and minefields. From the series "Israeli Landscape 2013".

Kacper Kowalski: The Depth Winter 05. Snow covered trains on tracks leading to an industrial site at the port of Gdynia, Poland. From the series "The Depth of Winter" – I take to the skies above Poland to gain a D3X vantage point over a country gripped by harsh winter. Temperatures can drop to -30 C degrees and stay below zero for months. The few specks of colour in these images - a yellow bus on an empty country road, a red tractor in a forest clearing - are the only signs of human activity in this monochrome landscape.

Michael K Nichols: Untitled. From the series "The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion" – The lion (Panthera leo) is synonymous with wild Africa. Few people realize that illegal killing, relentless habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation has this species in a crisis that must be addressed by the world, not just Africa. Nearly a century ago, there were as many as two hundred thousand lions in Africa. Today, the most recent surveys estimate that there are fewer than thirty thousand wild lions.

Christian Ziegler: Vegetarian Carnivorous Plant. The Flask-shaped pitcher-plant (Nepenthes ampullaria) has pitchers which are not covered by a lid, like most others. The enzymatic setup of its digestive fluid shows that it digests plant matter best, mostly fallen leaf litter, so that one could call this pitcher plant a vegetarian. From the series "Vegetables with an Appetite - Carnivorous Plants of Borneo" – a photo essay about carnivorous plants from Borneo, and their ways to feed, and otherwise interact with animals, some of which have been recently discovered and only start to get explored by science. Carnivorous plants have evolved independently in several parts of the world, always as a response to nutritionally poor environments, usually swamps and wetlands..

Christian Ziegler: Sweet Lick. Nepenthes rajah, the largest picther of the genus, with up to 3 liters content. Endemic to Mt. Kinabau and one other mountain, IUCN status 'endangered'. Nepenthes rajah has a mutualistic relationship with the Tree shrew (Tupaia montana) and some nocternal rat specie. From the series "Vegetables with an Appetite - Carnivorous Plants of Borneo" – a photo essay about carnivorous plants from Borneo, and their ways to feed, and otherwise interact with animals, some of which have been recently discovered and only start to get explored by science. Carnivorous plants have evolved independently in several parts of the world, always as a response to nutritionally poor environments, usually swamps and wetlands.